"What good is power if you cannot protect the ones you love?" muses Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. I can’t think of a more appropriate question to discuss the life of 19th century Lakota hero Crazy Horse. His undeniable power as a warrior, in fact, didn’t spare him from having tragedy visit him time and time again. Taking place against the backdrop of the Lakota-U.S. conflict in the second half of the 1800s, his life was the quintessential tale where epic, heartbreak, bravery, and horror mix freely. His people were one of the last Native American tribes to stand in the face of American expansion. And Crazy Horse was always in the thick of the action, throughout over twenty years of intermittent warfare. In the first of this four-part series, we’ll cover the first couple of decades of Crazy Horse’s story, the first dramatic clash between Lakota warriors and the U.S. Army, vision quests, thunder-dreaming, earning the ‘Crazy Horse’ name, Sand Creek Massacre, and calling for revenge.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of http://www.amazon.com/Dakota-Warrior-Story-James-R-Weddell/dp/1495963853

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